Set Me Free
by Annakovsky
Summary: Giles at thirteen.


SUMMARY: Giles at thirteen.   
  
SPOILERS: None.  
  
RATING: PG-13, for language, I suppose.  
  
DISCLAIMER: All characters, settings, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  
  
ARCHIVING: Probably, but ask first so I know where it is.  
  
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to annakovsky@hotmail.com  
  
***********  
  
Set Me Free  
  
***********  
  
It was a gorgeous day outside and he was trapped, shut up in his bedroom with three Sumerian grammars, four vocabulary lists, a sheet of translations to do, and a headache.   
  
"Someday you'll thank me," his father had said as he handed him the work. "Sumerian is extremely important and I dare say sometime in the future you'll be glad you spent today working on it."  
  
Ha ha. He had a hard time imagining any scenario where that would be true, but amused himself by trying during the following tiresome lecture on duty and responsibility. "A Watcher must make certain sacrifices...." Perhaps someday, when he built a ruddy time machine and went back to ancient Mesopotamia, he'd be frightfully glad that he'd spent today learning about the ergative case. Why Father, thank you so very much for forcing me to work on hideously boring things when I was thirteen, for it came in very handy when I met Gudea, king of ancient Lagash!  
  
"And please stop scowling," his father said as he brought his homily on duty to a close. Rupert antagonistically twitched his lips up in a mock smile before trudging up to his room.   
  
So. Nominal clauses. Was it the possessive pronoun first and then the plural marker or the other way round? He sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead. He couldn't think – he was fuming, anger coiled tight in his belly. He didn't want to be a ruddy Watcher and it wasn't as though anyone had ever asked him. No, it was destiny. He hated ruddy destiny and he hated these books and he hated that this was his whole life and that there was no way out.   
  
He got up and paced around. Thought about kicking the wall, but the mark his shoe had left the last time had gotten him into trouble. Besides, it had hurt.   
  
The room was too quiet, anyway. The only sound was faint music coming from his sister's room next door, music of which his father disapproved. Well, he was going to listen to it too, and no one was going to stop him. See if they could.   
  
He knocked on Letitia's door tentatively, and eased it open when, after a pause, she called for him to come in.   
  
"Can I borrow one of your records?" he asked. She was lying on her bed casually, and he thought the room smelled like smoke.   
  
"*You* want to borrow one of my records?" she asked, looking amused. "Little man's all grown up, hey?"   
  
"Shut up. You been smoking?"   
  
"No."  
  
"Have too, I can smell it."  
  
"Tell Dad and I'll murder you," she said, without much animosity.   
  
"So can I have a record?"  
  
"Are you allowed to listen to records?"  
  
"Are you allowed to smoke?" he asked. She rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile.   
  
"Oh, take one and get out, then." She gestured to the cardboard box of records on the other side of the room, and he moved gratefully to look through them.   
  
Her records were okay, he thought. He didn't know much about them, but ended up taking one by The Kinks back to his room. He'd heard them on the radio and had overheard one of the prefects at school saying they were cool.   
  
He put it on his record player, the cheap, kid one he still had from when he was small, and went back to his desk, resentfully picking up his Sumerian work to continue. But the music immediately arrested him. Underneath the catchy melody it was all tightly coiled energy, power-chords pulsing rhythmically, angry and intense. His hands clenched into fists, listening to it, and he felt a wild sort of power rising up in him. He wanted to punch someone, or smoke a cigarette, or learn to play guitar like that. To be one of the boys who hung around outside the corner store, smoking and lounging against the walls dangerously. Maybe in a leather jacket.   
  
He was sick of being scrawny Rupert Giles, skinny little boy in the clothes his mother picked out, writing out exercises in dead languages on a summer afternoon. Ruddy Sumerian. No, *bloody* Sumerian. He wrote it in the margin of his paper in thick block capitals, but then erased it guiltily. "Bloody bloody bloody," he chanted softly. He punched his pillow. Bloody *fucking* Sumerian. He didn't dare say that out loud, but he thought it anyway.   
  
Wasn't going to be a bloody Watcher. Maybe they could make him do Sumerian now, but soon he'd be of age, and then they'd just see, wouldn't they?   
  
He went back to his exercises, pencil tapping rhythmically along with the music. The energy of it twisted in his muscles, taking up residence in his fingers and toes, in his fists and between his legs.   
  
The next day he bought his first LP.   
  
*******  
  
END  
  
*******  
  
Note: Title is from The Kinks song of the same name, though that's not the song Giles listens to here. (That's "All Day And All of the Night", for the record.) 


End file.
